Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Tervis whistled. “Two months?”

Meralda nodded. “No one has tried since,” she said. “At least, no one of the Realms.”

Tervis shook his head. “These Hang,” he said, after a furtive look around. “What do they want?”

Meralda wiped her hands on her napkin. “People have been asking that for nine hundred years, Tervis,” she said. “I wish I knew.”

The palace bells struck twice. Meralda covered her plate with her napkin, and after a moment, Kervis and Tervis did the same. Meralda smiled.

“Well, gentlemen,” she said, as their red-haired Phendelit waiter appeared. “Time to go.” She dropped a small silver coin into the waiter’s hand and grinned into his astonished face. “A Hang fleet is heading for Tirlin,” she whispered, as the man blushed furiously. “Fifty ships, each longer than five Towers and each laden with forty thousand four-armed, two-headed, venom-spitting half-wolf Hang warriors. When you tell the penswifts, do try to get the numbers right.”

Kervis raced around to Meralda’s side of the table and pulled her chair back. “You probably shouldn’t mention the war dragons or the marching ogres, ma’am,” he said. “Might cause a panic.”

Meralda nodded solemn agreement, turned, and bade the Bellringers to follow. The Phendelit waiter watched for a moment, shook his head, and darted off to refill another round of tea glasses.

The Thaumaturgical Library buried deep within the palace cellars held little in the way of research concerning directed refraction. Instead, Meralda found page after page of intricate, improbable spellworks intended to render mages and kings invisible.

“Nonsense,” she muttered, skimming past the last ten pages of an entry listed as “Mage Mellick’s Wondrous Optical Void.” Frowning, she decided the only thing this Mellick ever made vanish was a monthly portion of the crown’s purse.

Disgusted, she rose, closed the heavy wood-bound volume, and padded barefoot on the cool stone floor back toward the library stacks. The foxfire she’d cast followed her, maintaining its station just above her left shoulder, sending shadows darting and bobbing down the long, high ranks of books arcane.

Boot steps sounded down the corridor outside the library, causing Meralda to frown until the footfalls turned and ended with the slamming of a door. She’d practically had to threaten the Bellringers to make them stay out of the library. The last thing she wanted now was an apprentice wizard from the college pestering her with sidelong looks and first-year questions.

Meralda shoved the heavy tome back into its place and stepped back. “Oh, for an index,” she muttered. “Four thousand eight hundred volumes reaching back six hundred years and not a table of contents in the lot.”

The library replied with silence and darkness. Meralda sighed, closed her eyes, and plucked another name from her memory. “Mage Heldin,” she said aloud. “Thaumaturge to King Roark II. Originator of Heldin’s Suspended Mirror. 1740, I think.” Meralda stalked down the stacks, squinting at the dates embossed on the spine of each book.

Tirlin’s history fled past. Meralda wondered what was hidden there, within the brittle pages. Oh, rubbish, for the most part, she mused, but no doubt a few gems as well.

“Perhaps even a shadow moving spell,” she said aloud. “Or am I the first to try?”

Heldin. Meralda slowed, urged the foxfire brighter. 1738, 1739–1740. “Here you are,” she said, pulling the book gently out of the chest-high shelf and brushing away the worst of the dust and spider webs. “Let’s see if you were worth looking for.”

Pages crackled as they turned. Page One contained a faded but still legible List of Works, With Page Numbers. Meralda smiled and began to read, ticking off spells as she went. “Spinning Colored Lights” held little interest, as it was merely a simple variation of the foxfire charm that hung above her shoulder. But what was “Seeing in Circles”?

Meralda turned fragile pages and returned to her desk. Part of her mind wrestled with Mage Heldin’s abysmal penmanship, but the rest was occupied with Hang five-masters.

In nineteen days Tirlin will be crowded with the royal houses of all the Five Realms. The Phendelit king, The Alon queen, the regent of Vonath, the king of Erya. All together, all vulnerable. Meralda frowned.

Tirlin had burned, once. In 1660, Meralda recalled. Parts of the palace still bore the scars. Meralda had a vision of Fleethorse Street engulfed in flames, wondered why she should think such a thing, and was suddenly chilled to the bone.

Mage Heldin’s “Seeing in Circles” spell proved to be a crude method of momentarily freezing a hand-drawn image in a red-hot brass ring. Meralda sighed, stretched until her back and shoulders made popping noises, and put her chin down in her hands. Row after row of shadowed, dusty books stared back.

It appears, she said silently to herself, that I am on my own.

Someone knocked softly at the library door. “Ma’am,” said Kervis. “Five bells. You said to fetch you, and remind you about supper with the mages.”

Meralda closed Mage Heldin’s book and rose. “Coming, Guardsman,” she said, her voice sudden and loud in the stillness of the library. “Coming.”

She found her stockings, slipped them on, and pulled her boots on before returning the life work of one Mage Heldin, Thaumaturge to King Roark II, to its long vigil amid the dusty shelves.

Mage Fromarch, former Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin, met Meralda on the porch of his tiny, ivy-covered red brick house.

Fromarch was gaunt. He’d been gaunt the day Meralda met him, five years before. His long, pale face with its wide-set grey eyes and hawkish nose and thin small mouth always looked tired, and perhaps a little sad. Meralda knew the last, at least, to be untrue. The real Fromarch, the one behind the long unsmiling face, always wore an impish grin.

Fromarch wore loose brown trousers and soft leather house shoes, the toes spotted with chemical burns and tiny spatters of molten metals. His white shirt bore a singe-mark in the center, the exact shape of an iron.

“Ho there, ’prentice,” he said, thrusting forth a bent ladle at Meralda before she mounted the last unswept porch step. “Taste this.”

Meralda took the spoon. Its bowl steamed, filled with a thick, meaty stew that smelled of onions, beef, and green bell peppers, though it was obviously far too hot to taste.

Meralda blew gently on the spoon and smiled. Fromarch didn’t smile back but his scowl did soften, and his wet grey eyes neither narrowed nor blazed when they met hers.

“Mage,” said Meralda. “I’ve missed you.”

“Hmmph.” snorted Fromarch. “You’ve got better sense than most, Mage Meralda. You taste this and tell certain upstart Eryan wand-wavers that we Tirlish folk know best how to season a bit of stew.”

Fromarch jerked his thumb behind him as he spoke, and Shingvere opened Fromarch’s screeching screen door far enough to poke his head outside.

“Good evening, Lady,” he said to Meralda. “Since the master of the house has no better manners than to accost guests on his porch with over salted stew, allow me to invite you inside. Mind the rotting carcasses, now, and don’t step into the trash pit.”

Meralda brought the spoon to her lips and tasted. “Well?” boomed Fromarch.

Meralda smiled. “It’s quite good,” she said. Fromarch whirled and snorted in triumph.

Shingvere flung the door open wide. “Now you’ve done it, Apprentice,” he said to Meralda, with a wink. “You’ve gone and agreed with him, and he’ll spend hours strutting and preening.” The aging wizard shook his head. “We can only hope he drinks to excess and lapses into quiet slumber before the evening is ruined.”